Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Hillary Clinton floors Donald Trump in first presidential debate

Hillary Clinton was
the winner in a one-sided debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, an Emmy
award winning American political psychologist said, a verdict that was
generally upheld by many debate watchers in America.

A CNN poll gave
Hillary 62 per cent and Donald Trump 27 per cent. Eleven per cent were
undecided.

Political psychologist,
Dr Bart Rossi in an interview with New York Daily News said Hillary appeared
strong, focused, her responses had depth and clarity.

“She looked smart,
composed and presidential. She flashed a winning personality by being
consistent, appealing to everyone and presenting as comfortable in her own
skin.

“Trump had overly
simplistic answers. He stayed on the defensive with the birther issue,
bankruptcy and his tax returns. There was a lack of focus, no vision, limited
knowledge and for first time, appeared agitated and uncomfortable: not
presidential timber. There was essentially no appeal beyond his base. If
graded: Hillary Clinton would get an “A minus” and Donald Trump, a “C,” he
said.

Rossi’s verdict is
echoed by Jim Manley, a former communication advisor for Senator Harry
Reid.

“Hillary won the
debate and Trump lost. He was rattled and she was not. She looked presidential
and he looked way out of his league. I feel a helluva lot better about our
chances of winning in November after tonight”.

Josh Greenman,
columnist for Daily News also gave the debate to Clinton :

“In his first debate
with Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan famously calmed voters skeptical about whether
he could cross the threshold of gravitas and look like a President. After that,
election lore says, it was all over.

“While Donald Trump
lost no hardcore supporters last night — to them, as has repeatedly boasted, he
can do no wrong — he failed the Reagan test. His uneven, often rambling,
occasionally passionate performance won’t win over wary and worried voters.

Hillary Clinton on debate night: She
was poised and regal

“Hillary Clinton was
poised and prepared. She for once exuded a happy-warrior aura. She parried
every thrust. She eviscerated his tax plan, a giveaway to the richest.

In Reuters report of
the debate, Democrat Hillary Clinton accused Republican Donald Trump of racism,
sexism and tax avoidance during a heated presidential debate that could
reshape the 2016 campaign for the White House.

Trump, a real estate
tycoon making his first run for public office, said Clinton’s long years of
service represented “bad experience” with few results and suggested her
disavowal of a trade deal with Asian countries was insincere.

For Trump, 70, the
debate was a chance to appear disciplined. For Clinton, 68, it was an
opportunity to reassure voters she could be trusted. It remained to be seen how
voters would judge their performance.

In a sign investors
saw Clinton as the winner, Asian shares recouped early losses on Tuesday and
the dollar edged away from a one-month trough against the yen. Markets have
tended to see Clinton as the candidate of the status quo.

In one of the more
heated exchanges, the two candidates attacked each other for the controversy
Trump stoked for years over whether President Barack Obama was born in the
United States.

The president, who was
born in Hawaii, released a long form birth certificate in 2011 to put the issue
to rest. Only this month did Trump say publicly that he believed Obama was
U.S.-born.

“He (Trump) has really
started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black
president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it.
But he persisted. He persisted year after year,” Clinton said.

“Nobody was pressing
it, nobody was caring much about it … I was the one that got him to produce the
birth certificate and I think I did a good job,” Trump said.

African-American
voters overwhelmingly support Clinton, but Trump in recent weeks has said he
believes his policy agenda would benefit them and said the policies of Obama
and Clinton had failed to help black Americans.

Clinton wore a red
pantsuit, and Trump wore a dark suit and a blue tie to the encounter that could
shift the course of the tight race for the Nov. 8 election. She called him
Donald. He called her Secretary Clinton for much of the debate before switching
to her first name.

Toward the end of the
debate, Trump said Clinton did not have the endurance to be president.

“She doesn’t have the
look, she doesn’t have the stamina,” he said.

Citing her own public
record, Clinton retorted: “As soon as he travels to 112 countries and
negotiates a peace deal, a ceasefire, a release of dissidents … or even spends
11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me
about stamina.”

Each accused the other
of distortions and falsehoods and urged viewers to check their campaign
websites for the facts.

Clinton called the New
York businessman’s tax policies “Trumped-up trickle-down” economics and Trump
accused the former secretary of state of being “all talk, no action.”

“I have a feeling I’m
going to be blamed for everything,” Clinton, the first woman to win the
presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party, said during one tough
exchange.

“Why not?” retorted
Trump, a former reality TV star.

Clinton knocked Trump
for not releasing his income tax returns and said that decision raised
questions about whether he was as rich and charitable as he has said. She noted
that the few years of tax returns he had released showed that despite his
wealth, he had paid no federal income tax.

“That makes me smart,”
Trump said.

“I have a tremendous
income,” he said at one point, adding that it was about time that someone
running the country knew something about money.

Clinton criticised
Trump for failing to pay some of the business people with whom his company had
contracted. She said she had met a lot of people who had been cheated by her
opponent.

Trump said such
incidents of non-payment had taken place when the work was unsatisfactory.

TRADE AT ISSUE

Trump attacked Clinton
for her trade policies and said she would approve a controversial trade deal
with Asian countries despite opposing it as a candidate.

“You were totally in
favor of it, then you heard what I was saying, how bad it is, and you said,
‘Well, I can’t win that debate,’ but you know that if you did win, you would
approve that,” he said.

Clinton rejected the
criticism.

“Well Donald, I know
you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts,” she said.

Moderator Lester Holt
struggled to rein in the candidates, with discussions about trade policy suddenly
shifting to the fight against Islamic State as Trump accused Clinton of giving
away information to the enemy by revealing on her website how she planned to
defeat the group. Clinton said that unlike Trump, she at least had a plan for
fighting Islamist militants.

Opinion polls have
shown the two candidates in a very tight race, with the latest Reuters/Ipsos
polling showing Clinton ahead by 4 percentage points, with 41 percent of likely
voters.

A second Reuters/Ipsos
poll released on Monday showed half of America’s likely voters would rely on
the debates to help them make their choice.

Two other presidential
candidates – Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein –
were not invited to take part in the debate because neither had obtained at
least 15 percent support in national polls, the threshold established to
qualify.